by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
My father lived through the Great Depression and saw action with the Marines during World War II (that’s his picture above). So he had a view of life shaped by those experiences that few can relate to today.
After fighting on Okinawa, he was sent to northern China as part of a U.S. occupation force at the end of the war. Not many Americans realize it, but U.S. Marines occupied parts of northern China from 1945–49. There my father witnessed the effects of the Great Chinese Inflation that helped lead to the victory of Mao Zedong and the Communists over the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek.
The Nationalist government printed vast amounts of paper money to fight World War II against the Japanese.